Mari Fitzduff

Professor and Director of the MA Conflict and Coexistence Programme at Brandeis University

Interviewed by Julian Portilla, 2003

This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).

Don't be scared to mainstream the work. You lose it in mainstreaming it, because we all like to think we're revolutionaries. The work is really effective only when it's mainstreamed because that's much more sustainable and secure. So for instance, a lot of people do educational programs, bringing children together. They're compulsory in Northern Ireland now. Every child has to go through a program of education about their own culture, other people's culture, and conflict resolution. It's compulsory. You can't get out of it, even if you're living in a Catholic school or a Protestant school or whatever. So don't be afraid to mainstream. Some of us are afraid of losing our revolutionary fervor, or in a way selling out by putting these programs within the military and the police and the schools and everywhere else. I feel that ours, just like the environment, has to be written into every writ of every organization that there is. Therefore, learning to mainstream, I think, has been an important lesson for us. I would like to see it through every society where there is even a tendency toward division.